My Story: Spreading the Ashes of Love
Hinesburg's Laurie Barnett tells of meeting a woman at a biker rally who wanted the ashes of her late husband spread across 50 states. Laurie was happy to participate. And it helped change her life.
Editor’s note: This is a transcript of the audio and, as such, it reads differently than a story that is written. We encourage you to listen to the audio of Laurie’s story. (If you are in the Substack app, simply click the play arrow at the top right corner.)
I’m Laurie Barnett. I am currently 72, and I ride a Honda Gold Wing which I had triked [motorcycle converted to three-wheeler] in 2022. I’ve put put about 40,000 miles on it since I got it (2008), but I’ve got 260-something thousand lifetimes under my belt.
My ex-husband’s first midlife crisis – coming home after buying a motorcycle – was always a fantasy of mine. And I said, ‘If you’re going to learn to ride, I’m going to learn to ride.’ Best thing we ever did. He was also a big traveler, so we did a lot of traveling.
And, you know, the [marital] license expired after 29 years, but I’m riding, I’m traveling and I’m loving it.
In 2023, I went to the Women’s Motorcycle Rally in Pennsylvania, and I met Teresa Staats, a woman who had lost her husband the previous year – Lakin Todd Southall – and they rode Indian motorcycles. She was looking for somebody from each of the 50 states who rode an Indian to take him on his last ride. So she was giving out cremains.
Well, I don’t ride an Indian, but I was planning on basically spending the whole summer on the road, so she said, ‘Do you want to take him with you?’ And I said, ‘I would love to. I would be honored.’
So he had been in the service, had been a motorcycle cop, you know, road motorcycles after. I finally saw his picture – blue-eyed blonde with a Siamese cat next to him, and I am a cat person. He loved ice cream and traveling, and I like ice cream. I felt it was my duty to make sure that we went to as many ice cream places as possible and try every flavor possible.
So I think we covered 24 states and then later England and Paris. We did about 8,800 miles that summer, stopping for ice cream, and I would sprinkle his ashes here and there and take pictures and collect souvenirs, and I got him a little salt and pepper shaker to carry him in and, you know, sprinkled him here and there, and then would take videos and send them back to Teresa.
At the end of the summer I sent her a collection of souvenir things, pins and stickers and such from various motorcycle places. And she sent me this beautiful rag quilt, which is pink with white polka dots on one side, and the other side, all of the squares are pink ice cream cones, which stays on my bed.
Having him with me was like the highlight of my trip, because I felt like I was forced to do everything, to take him, show him everything. It’s made a connection. I can’t quite describe it, but I had met a bunch of women at the rally, and so they knew I was traveling with him, and that I was posting pictures on Facebook, and so all of these various women that I had met were following my travels and following Todd’s travels.
When I got home from the trip, we toured around Vermont and did more ice cream, and we went to the Veteran’s Cemetery. We did Smuggler’s Notch, and, you know, I sprinkled some of him by that big rock, and the last stop I did was I went right up to the top of [Route] 17; there’s that overlook with the stickers and everything. And I sprinkled the very last of his ashes and did a video and posted it. And then I sent Teresa all of the pins and souvenir things that I had gotten, and she wrote back to me and said, ‘Well, do you want some more?’
And I said, ‘Okay, fine.’
I’ve come out of my cocoon and just connected with people and kept going to more and more of these rallies and just developing this family of you know, motorcyclists. I’m really realizing how much I just was in my little shell for years and years and years.
In ’22, I had been going to a church over in Huntington for 40 years. New pastor came in and I had come out to the church and it was okay, you know, with the board, but then Fern Feather was murdered. Fern Feather was a transgender woman from Hinesburg who was brutally murdered up in Morrisville. And I said to myself, ‘I have to be someplace that’s open and affirming.’ And I brought it up to the church and was basically told like, ‘No, that’s not happening.’ It was clear I wasn’t welcome there anymore.
So I started coming to the church over here and really have come out of my shell, become who I am, become myself. You know, I joined the knitting group, joined the Bone Builders, the sewing group, the senior group.
I feel like I’m … I’m me. A completely different person than I was, growing up.
